Recording - June 2017 - 44

Keeping the Rhythm

DIY Drums

Be cool

FIGURE 2
work, you can step enter
into your MIDI sequencer (Figure 3), you
can play live using your MIDI interface and
then quantize (or not), or you can copy/
paste actual samples or MIDI data right
into a timeline, such as with Ableton Live
(Figure 4).

FIGURE 3
If you enter MIDI data rather than audio samples, you can easily experiment
with different patches, or create remixes later by using different sounds with
the same pattern. In any case, avoid
placing different drum sounds all on the
same track. Just like with acoustic drums
or loops, you want separate kick, snare,
hat, etc., tracks so you can control and
manipulate properly in the mix. You can
get away with having some stereo loops
here and there, but you're usually much
better off giving yourself some mix control.
If you've played your MIDI performance simultaneously into one track, say
by doing kick/snare or kick/snare/hat all
at once, simply create a new track, select
only one instrument (e.g. kick) using the filtered selection option (Figure 5), and cut/
paste to a new track. If you don't have this
option, you may be able to route different
patches to different outputs on your device
or any number of other things to get your
tracks separated. If there's no way for you
to do that, then play one part at a time.
44

RECORDING June 2017

Creating basic patterns is pretty easy, but
you want them to be cool. Think of your
basic pattern as a roughed-in Michelangelo's
David. You can see that it's him, but now it's
time to start chiseling in that six pack.
One of the best ways to improve a
groove is with what I like to call tiered
turnarounds. Consider the basic pattern
in Figure 6a. If you loop this, you'll notice
an odd sensation of wrongness when it
repeats. The second measure needs
variance. So instead, I might change it up
as shown in Figure 6b. That feels better, but
on measure 4, we get a similar sense of
wrongness, so I'd add another variant, a
bit more like a fill, as shown in Figure 6c. I
usually take this out to 8 measures, where I
might even use both the last 2 measures as
"fill". Once I have an 8 measure groove, I
feel more comfortable repeating it.
Each of these little variances or fills,
which usually happen over proportionately
longer periods of time (i.e. a quarter of the
length of the loop) is basically a turnaround,
which creates the feeling of balance in a
passage. The number of tiers and variances
you use may vary, but the concept is
to create a push-pull while repeating. You
don't really want to not repeat-that would
be chaos-but turnarounds work with
repetition to keep the listener engaged.
The same concept can be applied to any
kind of riff: guitars, pianos, bass, etc.

FIGURE 4

Oh yeah, the song...

Hopefully you've already been
considering the song as a whole, but if
you haven't, this is a good time to refer
again to the song itself. Once you've
got one pattern you like, consider a
larger variance or different pattern altogether for your chorus, and maybe a

third for your bridge. The song should
have informed your basic pattern, and
it will probably inform your chorus, and
it should certainly inform you what to do
with the bridge and other odd sections.

FIGURE 5
Thinking of the song as an arrangement
when you're building drums is one of
the best ways to make your rhythm track
stand out from the crowd, even if you're
starting with drums, and even if you're
not going for a standard song structure.
If you're going for a build-over-time track
or a trance track with subtle progression,
do these things in the drum track as well
as any other instrumentation, rather
than letting the drum track plod along
with no change. Once you've got an
arrangement, start augmenting with
effects, variable velocities, new parts,
and even recording acoustic parts to go
alongside, if you can.
If you're using hardware synths, you
should probably record that audio to
the DAW now, so you're not fumbling
around when you try to mix. This is a
good opportunity to use cool things like
tube saturation or even more drastic
effects to give the tracks even more life,
grit or uniqueness. Make sure to mute
and record one by one (or use your
synth's L/R or aux outputs strategically)
so you still have separated tracks. Don't
just record the whole stereo mix from the
synth, especially if you're sending tracks
to a mix engineer.

Timbre and flavor

Once you've got some cool sounds,
killer patterns and an arrangement that
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